The war of 1812: For natives, resisting American invaders was the ‘only option’

War of 1812: For natives, resisting invaders was the ‘only option’

On the outbreak of the War of 1812, Thomas Jefferson declared, “The acquisition of Canada … will be a mere matter of marching.” The prediction by the American founding father and third president seemed sensible at the time: The British were tied down in Europe fighting Napoleon. They had fewer than 1,000 regular soldiers defending Canada, and the volunteer Canadian militias in the colonies were no substitute for professional troops.

But there were also the native warriors to consider, and historian say they were vital to the defence of British North America. “First Peoples warriors played crucial roles in the victories at Mackinac, Detroit, and Queenston Heights,” said Peter MacLeod, pre-Confederation historian and curator of the 1812 exhibit at the Canadian War Museum. Their support “saved western Upper Canada from defeat and occupation during the first year of the war.”

Thousands of native warriors led by such heroic figures as Shawnee Chief Tecumseh fought the Americans. Tecumseh’s constant re-deployment of warriors at Fort Detroit in August 1812 convinced the Americans to surrender because they thought they were vastly outnumbered. Tecumseh had fought the Americans previously to save native lands from settlers, including the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe. He died at the Battle of the Thames in October 1813, standing with native warriors against the Americans after British troops had fled.

John Brant, son of the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant who resisted the American Revolution, was another able commander. He led native warriors at Queenston Heights and the Battle of Beaver Dams, where British and native forces ambushed American invaders after being tipped off by Laura Secord.

Native leaders were fighting to protect their homelands, not British settlements. They hoped to unite the First Nations into a confederacy capable of resisting U.S. expansion into native territories. “The annihilation of our race is at hand unless we unite in one common cause against the common foe,” Tecumseh warned in 1811, addressing a council of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations.

“The British since Governor Simcoe had been selling the idea of an independent Indian Country,” said Alan Corbiere, native historian and Anishinaabemowin revitalization coordinator at Lakeview School, M’Chigeeng First Nation. They believed a buffer state between the United States and the Mississippi would slow American expansion and protect Canada. The ‘Indian Country’ would include vast areas already overrun by U.S. settlers.

In exchange for their support, the British promised native tribes “they would get their old boundaries back and their hunting grounds would be preserved and restored,” Corbiere said.

As allies, though, the British had not proved a good bet. In 1763, the British “acknowledged that the aboriginal people owned the land from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes, saving the Thirteen Colonies,” Corbiere said. This promise was forgotten when the British and U.S. negotiated the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which recognized American independence. In fact, the First Nations were excluded from the negotiations.

In 1794 at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, the British at Fort Miami armed natives fighting U.S. troops in Ohio. “But when the tide turned against the natives the British locked them out of the fort, fearing a war with the U.S. if they let them in,” said MacLeod.

Why, then, would the natives risk siding with the British during the War of 1812? “I believe it was the only option for them,” said Corbiere. “The nations saw that the Americans were a greater threat and that they wanted the land at a more rapacious rate than the British.”

By 1814, Britain and the U.S. began peace talks in Belgium. British negotiators advocated for a native buffer state but only because its existence could block the invasion of Canada. “The Indians are but a secondary object,” wrote British negotiator Henry Goulburn. “As the Allies of Great Britain, she must include them in the peace … But when the boundary is once defined, it is immaterial whether Indians are upon it or not.”

But as negotiations continued, the British were concerned that prolonging the war might cause civil unrest at home. They dropped the demand for a buffer state and accepted a return to prewar borders as part of the 1814 Treaty of Ghent.
“By 1814, Great Britain had accepted the finality of American independence,” says York University Prof. William Wick. “As a result, natives became redundant.”

In the years that followed, the American people and government turned against native tribes, especially those that had played a role alongside the British during the war. Tribes were pressured to give up their traditional lands for wilderness areas to the West. Thousands were exiled. The British made room for settlers by limiting the extent of native lands through treaties. British North America might not have survived without native help, but that was of little consequence to governments eager to expand their territory and deal with the great migrations of European settlers.

“Natives won the battles in the War of 1812,” said Alan Corbiere. “But we then lost the peace.”

The contributions of native warriors are showcased in War Clubs & Wampum Belts: Haudenosaunee Experiences of the War of 1812 at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ont., from Oct. 29 to Dec. 24. For more information, go to www.woodland-centre.on.ca.